And although it’s essentially a meaningless preseason game, that still generates excitement for
Berhalter.

“Any time you’re playing a game, it’s exciting,” he told me. “No games are really meaningless,
right? You can take something from every game. That’s the reason why we’re actually doing it,
because we’ll learn something from this exercise. I’m excited and I’m excited for the staff to work
together and to go out and compete against another team.”

The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. and be streamed live on MLSsoccer.com.

The plan is for 22 Crew players to see game action. Each team of 11 will play for 45 minutes,
and Berhalter said there will be no first or second team. Offseason addition Michael Parkhurst will
play, but fellow new player Waylon Francis posted on Twitter last night that he will not play due
to a minor injury.

The game will be Berhalter’s first chance to see how some of the lessons the staff has been
preaching during the preseason are coming across. Most of the preseason focus so far has been on
offense, he said.

Midfielder Daniel Paladini described how Berhalter wants the Crew to play.

“Plain and simple: we want to keep the ball,” he said. “That’s always really nice to hear,
especially for a player like me who has been around a little bit and see ways different teams play.
Some teams get away with playing long balls like when San Jose, with (Chris) Wondolowski and
(Steven) Lenhart who are like the bash brothers or whatever you want to call them. With us, we want
to get the ball and play. If we have the ball then the other team can’t score.”

Berhalter said he does not want to see much of a gap between players because few starting
positions are locked up.

“It’s really early in camp and guys have been fighting hard,” he said. “To be honest, we don’t
want that clear-cut gap. We want there to be spots open. The result of the game isn’t that
important; I think the effort is important. We want to see guys competing because that’s what you
need to win and be successful.”

Paladini said Berhalter has assembled a staff different from those he has played for to this
point.

“Gregg and his staff are one of the best staffs I’ve seen in my career,” he said. “I think they’r
e really professional. All of them are World Cup veterans. They’ve all played in MLS, so they know
what it’s like to e in our shoes. Sometimes you get coaches who have never played in MLS or at a
high level and it’s just really nice to know that you’ve got a leader like that that’s played in
our shoes, and that goes down to trainings. He can see when we’re tired and need maybe a little bit
and he knows when to push us. I think right now they’ve got us going all-out and at this point it’s
where we want to be.

“Now it’s just learning each other and how we play and how Gregg and his staff want us to play.
I think we’re on the right direction and that has to do with the coaching staff.”